Letters to the editor | Saturday, Nov. 18

GOP tax plan will force grad students into poverty

I grew up on a farm outside Bucyrus, attended Ohio Wesleyan University for my undergraduate carrier (Class of 2015), and am currently a PhD student at Tulane University.

The current GOP tax plan would be devastating to graduate students. As a PhD student in a STEM field I automatically receive a tuition waiver ( about $50,000) and a stipend for working on as a teaching assistant (about $21,000). This stipend is tied to cost of living and is set to be just enough to live on without needing a second job, which would prevent me from focusing on my research and teaching full-time (in fact I am barred by contract from getting a second job). Under current law I do not pay taxes on the tuition waiver, as it is money that I never see and the school simply pays to itself, but do pay income taxes on my stipend. Under HR 1, the new GOP tax plan, I would pay taxes on it. This would in effect have me paying taxes on my $21,000 income as if I made $71,000, giving me an effective tax rate of about 50 percent. It should be evident that it is impossible to provide for oneself and family on about $10,000 annually.

I would like to reiterate that this is not a case of taxing the children of wealthy adults. Every graduate student in my department lives fully independently and we have an average age of around 30. In fact, a quarter of us are married with children. The GOP tax plan in its current form would tax us into poverty and destroy our way of life. We need increased reporting on the effect that this tax bill will have on PhD students, why this was included in the tax bill, and what our representatives are doing to fix it.